DNS mistake. Google crawled the wrong server. What to do?

Question

Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair

I have a couple of similar looking domains on Coudflare where I manage their DNS. An old forum and my new still MVP site. As many of you may have experienced, Cloudflare moves around the order of the domains on the websites list based on use, with the last one you edited always on top. Based on use my MVP site has been on top for a few months now, but recently I've been making some changes to the forums as well. Well what happens is that at one point I inadvertently rely on my spacial-memory to click on the edit button, and changed the IP of the wrong site!

The aftermath

I managed to change the A record for the MVP site that is currently live to point to the forum's server. I didn't realize the mistake until I received an email from Webmaster tools telling me of all the errors on my new site so Google ended up crawling the forum which was now being served under my MVP's domain name. Google now thinks my new MVP domain name has a completely different structure.

What can be done?

I have since fixed the DNS issue. But now I am wondering if I have permanently ruined my new site's Google ranking with this mistake.

• What problems have I created for my new site as far as SEO and Google Ranking?
• Can anything be done to curb/fix them?

Answer 1

Google crawlers are quite flexible as it comes to changes it shouldn't affect your rankings. I'd just proceed as usual in terms of SEO.

You may get a lot of crawl errors from non-existent but already indexed forum permalinks.

1. Upload & Test your new sitemaps in Webmaster Tools.

2. Make sure you check Webmaster Tools/Crawl Errors for 404/Not Found URLs regularly.

3. Fix 404 errors with Remove URLs or with 301 redirects and mark as fixed in Webmaster Tools.

4. Use Fetch as Google from webmaster tools to speedup indexing of redirected URLs.

To view all currently indexed url's of your website/domain query google with:

site:yourdomain.com